Jorge Milanes’s Diary

This guy had spent a few unforgettable days in Cuba: he rode a horse, went diving in a coral reef, visited both Havana and Cienfuegos, danced reggaeton and conga, roasted a pig on a stake, drank a whole lot of rum and —to top it off— he fell in love.

To get to school we had to cross the bridge that joins Cojimar with Alamar, two towns on the outskirts of Havana divided by a river.

My neighbor died this afternoon. What a shame! I want to go to the funeral home for a while. It’s ten o’clock at night right now, so I suppose I’ll stay there until around three in the morning, since I have to work tomorrow. On the way, I ran into other neighbors who were engaged in a lively conversation.

If someone invites me to a restaurant in Havana, I don’t hesitate to accept. It’s tempting especially if this involves a restaurant that sells in convertible pesos (CUCs), where supposedly the service is first class.

When leaving the house in search of text books for my studies, at the corner I passed by an older man, tall with white hair, but whom I didn’t know. In his face, time reflected each mark of his enjoyment, and judging by my own eyes he was about 70.

Someone who doesn’t live in Cuba and hears us say “damn it’s cold!” perhaps thinks, “Cold in Cuba? You don’t know what cold is.”

In the morning buses travel to and from many points across the city to the Book Fair, but it’s most difficult to catch one in the late afternoon, when everyone is leaving at the same time, 6:00 pm.

Not long ago on my job, we drew little pieces of paper with the names of people in our department. Each woman selected a man, and each man a woman, to be their “secret friend,” with the rule being that no one could tell who they selected.

I haven’t seen my twin nieces for eight years. Then too, it’s been seven years since I’ve seen their mother; that’s to say, my sister, who took them to live with her to France after she married a French guy.

Many of us have a charm or amulet that protects us from evil influences or energies. These objects -which can be in the form of a stone from the river or sea, the seed from a robust tree, a magnet or simply a tooth from some animal or a bone from a person- supposedly give us spiritual force.